SEM Booty: Best of 2013

January 31, 2014

For those who know me, you will know how much I LOVE data. Even more so the lessons you can learn, how to take action, and what to do better the next time.

This is why I love seeing the annual blog stats review that WordPress provides, not just because they make it look so pretty, but because you pick up so many interesting tidbits. For example, I learned that last year alone, there were SEM Booty Blog visitors from 114 different countries *mind blown*.

But in general, it is always a good idea to understand which blog posts have been the most popular, in terms of visits, commentary, and sharing. Looking at such data helps to give blog managers and content developers a better idea of popular topics, what’s on people’s minds and how interest may have changed from years past.

So with that, here is a quick round-up of the Top 3 SEM Booty Posts from 2013. A big thank you to everyone who has ever read, shared and commented.

The topic of attribution continues to be hot, hot, hot – and I do not see this changing any time soon. This post discusses both direct attribution and assisted attribution methods in relation to Pay-Per-Click advertising, and the key things you need to think about when showing the real business value of PPC.

Covario’s Executive Summit held at Google’s Mountain View campus did not fail to disappoint. From the “real” year of mobile, to the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMoT), and the died-and-gone-to-heaven conversion path and assisted conversion reports in Google Analytics, this summit was packed full of great takeaways straight from the mouth of Google. I’m sure Covario’s INFLECTIONPoint Conference next week will also have a ton of useful lessons for the coming year.

Winning in the SERPs is not just about getting your page to the top. You also need to think about PPC, shopping results, local listings, images, and of course video! But is Video SEO as straightforward as it seems? Running various test cases in YouTube helped to uncover a ton of things that influence rank, including… paying for promoted videos (gasp!). Make sure you check out this interesting case study about how paying for promoted videos can boost your video SEO efforts.